Galloway faces new Iraqi oil claims
George Galloway has today been hit with further allegations of profiting under the United Nations oil-for-food programme in Iraq.
The UN-backed Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) says 11 million barrels of oil were allocated directly in the Respect MP’s name by Saddam Hussein’s government.
Mr Galloway rejected outright the allegations, which come just days after a US senate committee accused him of lying to them while being questioned on similar claims in May.
“How many times must I repeat this? I’ve never had a penny through oil deals and no-one has produced a shred of evidence that I have,” the Bethnal Green and Bow MP said last night.
He added: “This is all a tissue of lies and a lie doesn’t become a truth through repetition.”
Mr Galloway is currently in Paris to meet lawyers representing former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, who was quoted in this week’s senate committee report as saying Mr Galloway requested oil allocations in the name of a friend, Fawaz Zureikat.
Today’s report from the IIC, which is headed by ex-US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, also claims that millions of barrels of oil were allocated in Mr Zureikat’s name.
In addition, it claims that payments totalling more than $120,000 were transferred into the bank account of Mr Galloway’s estranged wife, Amineh Abu-Zayyad.
In a letter to the IIC dated October 17th, the former Labour MP rejected the summary of his actions as “untrue, unjust, misleading and based on the same falsehood that has been levelled at me by the same sources time and time again over the last two and a half years”.
He insisted he had cooperated with the inquiry “in good faith” and accused the IIC of “the same partisan motivation” and “carelessness with natural justice” as Senator Norm Coleman, the chairman of the US senate committee.
“I had nothing to do with any oil deals done by Mr Fawaz Zureikat or anyone else,” he said, adding: “To now imply that I was somehow collectively guilty of paying more than a million dollars to the Saddam Hussein regime is simply preposterous and cannot be justified.”
Mr Galloway also denied that his estranged wife received $120,000 through the programme.
More than 2,200 firms across the world are accused by the IIC report of paying kickbacks worth £1.8 billion to Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The report also slates the UN for failing to monitor and prevent abuses in the scheme, which was set up in 1996 to allow Saddam’s regime to export a limited amount of oil to purchase food and medicine.
